“Up until now, Google Wallet was primarily focused on mobile payments. Google’s announcement about Wallet Objects APIs for offers and loyalty cards represents the first real expansion for Google into the non-payment areas of the digital wallet. The new technology aims to solve consumer convenience problems of managing paper coupons and loyalty cards in a way similar – at least on the surface – to Apple’s Passbook. Unlike Apple, Google has provided more tools such as APIs for developers to directly integrate Google Wallet. These tools also give retailers and brands more flexibility in the look, feel and behavior of Google Objects. The integration is easy, and marketers can work with one of Google’s partners to make it even easier. At Vibes, we are excited to be one of the first mobile marketing technology companies to offer Google Wallet integration on our Catapult platform.” — John Haro, chief technology officer, Vibes.

“Google has beat arch-rival Apple to market with [yesterday’s] launch of a subscription music streaming service while simultaneously mounting a threat to other providers such as Spotify and Pandora. I don’t believe this will have a big impact on Google’s overall product/mobile strategy or long-term revenue. It’s another ‘nice to have’ product to add to their suite. It is interesting from a user data perspective as it allows Google to enrich ad targeting by understanding music preferences/audience, and will create more incremental ad inventory for Google. I don’t think this impacts Apple; it impacts Pandora, which is a key player in the mobile ad ecosystem as a top publisher in our space. There are other branded services in the market today. Integrating with Google+ is an opportunity as it can increase usage of Google’s social platform with users sharing playlists/commenting/posting reviews around the music.” — Howie Schwartz, CEO and Founder of Human Demand.

“After the first day of the conference there was a lot of focus on advancements with tools used for Android as opposed to Android itself, which does allow these features’ impact to be applicable to all/most Android devices vs. just those on the latest release. When it comes to the impact on Search itself, the conference has hit on larger Google+ social integration, knowledge graph advancements, and deeper mobile improvements.” — Michael Martin, SEO Manager at Covario.

“At a macro-level, Google Glass has the potential to create a complete paradigm shift in how we consume media in 2013 and beyond — similar to what the App Store did when Apple launched it in 2008. The App Store brought entire cottage industries to life, launched incredible technologies and made mobile a focal point instead of a side conversation. Google Glass has the opportunity to do the same — it hinges on Google’s strategy for cultivating app developers and releasing hardware that delivers both form and function to drive consumer adoption and usage for this brand new platform.” — Nikao Yang, SVP New Business Development, AdColony.

“Google is going to have to start thinking about how to monetize their music streaming service. Based on how they have operated thus far, I think they’re going to support the service with advertising and offer a paid, ad-free upgrade. What will be interesting is the ad format they will choose. One would think audio ads are most appropriate for music services as users are not starting at the screen as they use the service. Also, mobile devices and apps introduce interesting opportunities. One of them is to use the AdMob framework for ads in apps, but down the road I imagine location based advertising will come into play. Perhaps some standard form of audio ad, generated from templates, could draw in users of the music service who are geographically close to the advertiser’s store. Another potential targeting possibility is to show ads based on user data from remarketing for example.” — Marc Poirier, Co-Founder & EVP, Business Development, Acquisio.

“Connecting the dots of Google I/O, the growth of mobile video consumption and mobile video advertising isn’t lost on Google, and they’re building a lot of the infrastructure to make sure that Android and Google are at the forefront of mobile video advertising. Google announced new Maps and Location APIs specifically designed to give better location data for each phone (while minimizing battery usage). This is a huge step for the future of mobile advertising. Many within the industry paint a picture where advertisers and brands can already do location-based ad targeting on mobile devices, but we haven’t reached the granular location targeting data needed to do that. With their announcement, Google is aware of that problem and working on a solution. In addition, Google announced a new video compression standard, VP9, which it sounds like they’re going to push as hard as possible within the industry. Some are arguing that there are legal and patent reasons behind Google’s championing of VP9, but we think that again, Google is aware that by reducing bandwidth for video content by 50 percent will only increase the amount of video content watched on mobile devices. Bandwidth is currently one of the hurdles to reaching the future of always-on, streaming video content to mobile devices. That will happen eventually, and it looks like Google is pushing for that future with their new VP9 video compression standard.” — Jack Cohen-Martin, COO and co-founder, Dynamix.

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